Top AI agent builders for 2025: what’s actually worth using?

There's like 50 new agent builders launching every month and it's getting impossible to tell what's real vs vaporware. Spent the last few months testing different platforms for actual client work, here's what I've found.

LangChain Still the most flexible if you know Python. You can build pretty much anything but the learning curve is brutal. Documentation is hit or miss. Good for complex custom agents, terrible if you just want to ship something fast. Requires real dev skills.

AutoGPT Great for experimentation and seeing what's possible. Terrible for production. Burns API credits like crazy and gets stuck in loops constantly. More of a proof of concept than a real tool. Don't use this for anything that matters.

CrewAI Multi-agent framework that's actually interesting. You can build teams of specialized agents that work together. Still pretty early though, lots of rough edges. Worth watching but maybe not betting your business on yet.

Zapier AI Actions Not really an agent builder but people use it like one. Good for adding AI to existing workflows. Limited on what counts as "agentic" though, more like smart automation than true agents.

Vellum Imo this agent builder has a lot of common knowledge and can build any agent in just a few minutes. most of the agents I build are one-shotted. i still face some issues with the code, and mostly rely on the agent builder to fix for m

Langflow Visual builder on top of LangChain. Makes LangChain more accessible but still requires understanding the concepts. Nice middle ground between code and no-code.

Relevance AI Focuses on business use cases, less developer-focused. Good templates for common agent patterns. Easier for non-technical teams but less flexible than code-first options.

The honest truth: most agent builders are still early and kinda janky. You'll hit bugs, things won't work like the demo, and you'll spend time debugging. Pick based on your skill level and how much control you need.

What are you all using? Any I'm missing that actually work well in production?

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